If Research Libraries and Funders Finance Open Access: Moving Beyond Subscriptions and APCs

Authors : John Willinsky, Matthew Rusk

Following the examples of SCOAP3, in which libraries fund open access, and eLife, in which funding agencies have begun to directly fund open access scholarly publishing, this study presents an analysis of how creatively combining these two models might provide a means to move toward universal open access (without APCs).

This study calculates the publishing costs for the funders that sponsor the research and for the libraries that cover unsponsored articles for two nonprofit biomedical publishers, eLife and PLOS, and the nonprofit journal aggregator BioOne.

These entities represent a mix of publishing revenue models, including funder sponsorship, article processing charges (APC), and subscription fees. Using PubMed filtering and manual-sampling strategies, as well as publicly available publisher revenue data, the study found that, in 2015, 86 percent of the articles in eLife and PLOS acknowledge funder support, as do 76 percent of the articles in the largely subscription journals of BioOne.

Such findings can inform libraries and funding agencies, as well as publishers, in their consideration of a direct-payment open access model, as the study (a) demonstrates the cost breakdown for funder and library support for open access among this sample of X articles; (b) posits how publishing data-management organizations such as Crossref and ORCID can facilitate such a model of funder and library per-article open access payments; and (c) proposes ways in which such a model offers a more efficient, equitable, and scalable approach to open access across the disciplines than the prevailing APC model, which originated with biomedical publishing.

URL : If Research Libraries and Funders Finance Open Access: Moving Beyond Subscriptions and APCs

Alternative location : https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16992

The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It

Authors : Lisa Matthias, Najko Jahn, Mikael Laakso

As Open access (OA) is often perceived as the end goal of scholarly publishing, much research has focused on flipping subscription journals to an OA model. Focusing on what can happen after the presumed finish line, this study identifies journals that have converted from OA to a subscription model, and places these “reverse flips” within the greater context of scholarly publishing.

In particular, we examine specific journal descriptors, such as access mode, publisher, subject area, society affiliation, article volume, and citation metrics, to deepen our understanding of reverse flips.

Our results show that at least 152 actively publishing journals have reverse-flipped since 2005, suggesting that this phenomenon does not constitute merely a few marginal outliers, but instead a common pattern within scholarly publishing.

Notably, we found that 62% of reverse flips (N = 95) had not been born-OA journals, but had been founded as subscription journals, and hence have experienced a three-stage transformation from closed to open to closed.

We argue that reverse flips present a unique perspective on OA, and that further research would greatly benefit from enhanced data and tools for identifying such cases.

URL : The Two-Way Street of Open Access Journal Publishing: Flip It and Reverse It 

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications7020023

Hype or Real Threat: The Extent of Predatory Journals in Student Bibliographies

Authors : H. Rainer Schira, Chris Hurst

Predatory publishing has risen with the development of open access publishing. This study examines how many potential predatory journals were used by Brandon University students by analyzing their bibliographies.

In total, 245 bibliographies including 2,359 citations were analyzed. Of the 1,485 citations to journals in these citations, five were found to cite journals on Beall’s List of Predatory Journals and Publishers.

The probable sources of these journals in the students’ bibliographies were examined.

URL : Hype or Real Threat: The Extent of Predatory Journals in Student Bibliographies

DOI : https://doi.org/10.21083/partnership.v14i1.4764

Analyser l’autorité dans les publications scientifiques

Auteure/Author : Evelyne Broudoux

Les usages de l’autorité dans les écrits scientifiques sont peu analysés en sciences de l’information et de la communication, la littérature se concentrant sur l’analyse de citations d’articles pour mesurer statistiquement leur influence.

A partir de définitions reconnues dans différentes disciplines, nous proposons de modéliser l’autorité selon ses modes d’expression. Le premier concerne les entités sociales nommées qui se décomposent en autorité énonciative et autorité institutionnelle.

Les autorités épistémique et cognitive concernent les connaissances ; la médiatisation des écrits se déroule sous l’autorité du support-logiciel et l’autorité du public visé.

Une première mise en pratique de la grille d’analyse ainsi constituée indique que ses trois modes d’autorité peuvent se superposer sans s’exclure selon les objectifs poursuivis par les auteurs.

URL : https://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/sic_01827957

Implementing publisher policies that inform, support and encourage authors to share data: two case studies

Authors: Leila Jones, Rebecca Grant, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz

Open research data is one of the key areas in the expanding open scholarship movement. Scholarly journals and publishers find themselves at the heart of the shift towards openness, with recent years seeing an increase in the number of scholarly journals with data-sharing policies aiming to increase transparency and reproducibility of research.

In this article we present two case studies which examine the experiences that two leading academic publishers, Taylor & Francis and Springer Nature, have had in rolling out data-sharing policies.

We illustrate some of the considerations involved in providing consistent policies across journals of many disciplines, reflecting on successes and challenges.

URL : Implementing publisher policies that inform, support and encourage authors to share data: two case studies

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.463

From closed to open access: A case study of flipped journals

Authors : Fakhri Momeni, Nicholas Fraser, Isabella Peters, Philipp Mayr

In recent years, increased stakeholder pressure to transition research to Open Access has led to many journals “flipping” from a toll access to an open access publishing model. Changing the publishing model can influence the decision of authors to submit their papers to a journal, and increased article accessibility may influence citation behaviour.

The aim of this paper is to show changes in the number of published articles and citations after the flipping of a journal. We analysed a set of 171 journals in the Web of Science (WoS) which flipped to open access.

In addition to comparing the number of articles, average relative citation (ARC) and normalized impact factor (IF) are applied, respectively, as bibliometric indicators at the article and journal level, to trace the transformation of flipped journals covered.

Our results show that flipping mostly has had positive effects on journal’s IF. But it has had no obvious citation advantage for the articles. We also see a decline in the number of published articles after flipping.

We can conclude that flipping to open access can improve the performance of journals, despite decreasing the tendency of authors to submit their articles and no better citation advantages for articles.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11682

Let It Flow: The Monopolization of Academic Content Providers and How It Threatens the Democratization of Information

Author : Dana Lachenmayer

The monopolization of academic journal publishers concentrates power and valuable information into the hands of a few players in the marketplace. It has detrimental effects on how information flows and is accessed.

This, in turn, has profound effects on how a nation progresses. Placed in a theoretical framework, utilizing the marketplace of ideas and the economies that coincide, this article takes a look at the history of Elsevier in order to chart this course toward monopolization.

It exhibits the effect it has already had on the academic community, while offering two models of Open Access as a much sounder option.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2018.1556189